


Ring Truly

by TheWhiteLily



Series: Glass Darkly [2]
Category: Smallville
Genre: Because that's a thing when you're Lex, Consent Issues, F/M, Finally actually talking about things, Future Fic, Happy Ending, Idiots in Love, M/M, Megalomaniac self-esteem issues, Misunderstandings, Not talking about things, Temporary Character Death, only not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-03-24
Packaged: 2018-05-28 17:37:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6338725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWhiteLily/pseuds/TheWhiteLily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Lex has a tantrum, and breaks some things.  And fixes some other things.  And finds that some things might be stronger than he'd known.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Falling

**Author's Note:**

> Please read [Glass Darkly](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5788846) first. It's short and... well, not so sweet. But this one will make it better. :)
> 
> The Contessa is from comic book canon, however I have only read her wiki pages, not the comics themselves. So let's just call her _inspired by_.
> 
> Thanks as always to Megabat for the beta, and putting up with my my obsessing.

Lex had always known he had a destiny.

It had taken him a longer time to understand that the destiny others could see for him wasn’t the same as the one he saw for himself.  And the destiny _they_ saw came with attached conditions.

First there’d been his father, who’d forced Lex to jump through his twisted hoops, though they barely made sense, let alone led towards any genuine chance of earning his approval.  His teachers, who’d been listening to Lionel, and didn’t know whether they were expecting a genius or the devil incarnate, but certainly knew that Lex wasn’t it.  The friends who were only after his money and, when they wanted him at all, always wanted more more more.  The press, constantly waiting for him to screw up one more time.  The wives, who had only ever loved the idea of being his widow.

Lex had quickly learned how to make people do what he wanted: a nudge here, a word there, vague promises and veiled threats, money and gifts to grease the wheels.  His father began to see him as more of a threat, and their battle began to claim innocent—and not-so-innocent—victims.

And then there’d been Clark.  Lex had thought he’d hit rock bottom on arrival in Smallville; thought he was over trying to live up to what other people thought he should be, over caring when he disappointed them.  Clark very much proved him wrong, because for the first time, Lex could see the shape of the destiny he’d always known lay ahead of him, and the hope took hold that maybe, maybe, _this_ time, he could reach it.

Because Clark saw their destiny too—or so Lex had imagined—and perhaps they could have even found it together, if it hadn’t been for _his_ father.  Because Jonathan Kent saw only the danger of Lex, the danger of his father, and the danger of the way Clark looked at him.  There was nothing Lex could ever do to make up for the crime, in Clark’s father’s eyes, of having been born a Luthor.  And while a Luthor might be your ally for a time… you could never, ever _trust_ one.

Lex remembered anew why that was and lashed out, as unreasonable demands began to pile up and suffocate his fledgling bond with Clark.

Ignore this.  Pretend this isn’t happening.  Overlook that.  Believe this lie.  Stop manipulating me.  Stop trying to make sense of this.  Stop experimenting to discover how, in this bizarre, mutated town, the rules of the universe can possibly still exist.  Be a better person.  But don’t imagine you’ll ever be good enough to deserve the truth.

Unlike Lex, Clark was a good son.  A compliant one.  Clark couldn’t even see the impossibility of the expectations his father heaped on them both and, as Lex failed and failed again to meet them, the look of admiration and awe in his eyes turned to suspicion and anger.  The destiny they’d seen turned sour; their promised legendary friendship began to flounder and fail.

By the time both their fathers were finally out of the picture—Jonathan mourned somewhat more sincerely than Lionel—the lesson Lex had been learning from his cradle had been cemented as one of the unbreakable laws of the universe.

Other people’s expectations drained you dry; they took and took and took until you had nothing left, and then blamed you for letting them down.  There was no point in even trying to live up to what others wanted from you; the only way to win the game was to make _them_ play by _your_ rules.

Lex had eventually recognized the futility of wanting more.  From Lionel, and from Clark.

He’d adjusted his hopes for Clark, set aside his dream of their destiny.  He stopped asking questions, stopped arguing and began treating the wildly fluctuating lies and moralizing as though they couldn’t touch him, because if he kept trying to explain the holes in Clark’s logic to him, then he was going to lose him entirely—and the idea of that was _unbearable_.

And Lex had slipped his father’s leash.  He’d taken his own path.  It turned out to be in his father’s footsteps, but only because that was the way he’d happened to be going.  He built his own company from the ground up.  Took risks.  Succeeded.  Failed.  Tried again.  Learned to be the man his father had wanted him to be, the man his father had run Luthorcorp into the ground, trying to mould him into.

The way Lex had won, in the end, was by reinventing the game, and making others play on his terms.  He didn’t try to live up to expectations anymore; he defined them.

Perhaps that was why at least _that_ part of the problem seemed so obvious to Lex, right from the beginning.

It was a lesson that Clark had never learned.

***

Clark was driving Lex slowly insane: he called Lex his best friend, but he lied and prevaricated and made excuses and couldn’t hold still for five minutes without rushing off somewhere to be Superman.

When Clark had revealed himself to the world in a blaze of primary-colored spandex, Lex had finally accepted the truth.  Clark would _never_ tell him his secret.  The price of keeping Clark’s friendship, it seemed, was to be forever blind and deaf and stupid, too, on just this one subject.  The destiny he’d dreamed for them would be forever out of reach.

Having accepted Clark’s bipolar marks, Lex realized that the only way to forge a relationship with the other half of his friend was to treat Clark like he was two people, and get into the nemesis business.  It was Clark’s own rules of engagement, after all, that meant that he couldn’t blame Lex for things he’d done to someone he claimed was a different person.  And, at least when Clark was in costume, Lex could treat the outbreaks of tedious moralizing with the judicious application of Kryptonite.  

It was always satisfying to watch the most powerful being on earth go weak at the knees for him.  To know that Clark couldn't have stopped him if he’d chosen to _push_.  That knowledge made up for a lot of things.  And it was a definite improvement on the traditional Kent storming of the castle and the subsequent devastation of glassware as Lex displaced his frustration onto a safe target.

Compartmentalization had got them past the simple lies of their days in Smallville: barefaced denials backed up with angry accusations of invasion of privacy.  As though it was an invasion of privacy to notice that the self-professed alien flying around in tights and an honest to god _cape_ was obviously your also-self-professed best friend.  Clark didn’t even wear a mask, as though a pair of cheap glasses were enough to make the people who’d known him since he was an unbreakable teenager forget what he looked like.  

Lex knew the truth.  Clark knew that Lex knew.  Lex knew that Clark knew that Lex knew.  Clark knew that, too.  And so did Lex.

They both _knew_.

But still Clark couldn’t admit it.

He expected Lex to be happy sitting alone at a table for two in the down-market Italian diner he’d chosen on a Friday night, waiting indefinitely on the possible return of a man who blatantly still wouldn’t trust him.  He barely tried for plausible excuses anymore.

Superman was growing more and more popular, while Clark grew less and less solid, working two demanding jobs with no time off while his eyes grew hollow and haggard with stress and layers of deceit.  

Clark had never learned how to say no.  He didn’t know how to place limits on other people’s expectations of him.  Didn’t know how to put himself and the promises he’d made to the people he valued first.  Didn’t understand the need to avoid being drained dry by the vampires who would take everything he had and keep demanding more.

He’d always been the boy who could do ten times the chores of anyone else in a fraction of the time, take care of his homework in the blink of an eye, save lives in his spare time, and run laps around Smallville for fun.  He’d always thought it was just this once, when ‘something turned up’ and he let someone down.  He had no idea how to balance the things people wanted of him, because he’d always thought he could do everything.  

In Smallville, he’d been fairly close to right.

In Smallville, he’d only been carrying one small town, not the whole world.

If Clark had let him in, Lex could have helped him, because these were things Lex knew.  He could have helped Clark learn to manage the expectations of the public.  Helped him work out how to prioritize his time and protect the things that kept him going.  Helped him cope with the burden of responsibility which obviously bore him down.

The lives underneath Lex as CEO of a multinational corporation still registered with _him_ , after all of Lionel’s training in advanced soullessness.  It was no wonder they weighed heavy on Clark as sole protector of the planet, with his soft heart and his Kent faith in the essential goodness of humanity.  

But Clark wouldn’t sit still for long enough to let Lex make him take a break.  Wouldn’t trust Lex enough to have a real conversation.  And Lex had been carrying this friendship on his own for long enough.

Perhaps if Lex had been raised a Kent, he would have confronted Clark.  Demanded he change himself to meet rigid standards.  If he’d been anyone else, perhaps he would have explained.  Talked honestly and openly about his feelings and tried to convince Clark of the dangers he saw.  But Lex _was_ a Luthor, through and through.  And Lex had never felt the need to ask anyone’s permission to fix their problems for them.

By the time Clark made it back to the table, Lex had asked the waitress to hold the entrees twice.  He’d also arranged a helicopter for the following day to take him to the underground vault where he stored the Kryptonite he’d had extracted from the Smallville area under the not-precisely-fictitious auspices of an environmental hazard cleanup.  And he’d made an appointment with a jeweler to design a setting for a rather… special stone.

***

Wearing the ring was almost like reclaiming their old friendship again.  Clark’s attention had always been like a drug, and Lex plunged back into addiction the moment the drought was over.

Of course, it was fun to taunt Clark.  A hand on his shoulder, watching him flinch and struggle for composure, watching him fight for an excuse to explain away the reaction they _both_ knew the cause for.  He had to know Lex was doing it on purpose, but he couldn’t just give in and admit what was going on; that wouldn’t have been Clark.

It took two weeks of spending almost every off moment together before Clark realized the most important side effect of being close to Lex’s new ring.

***

Lex wasn’t stupid; he’d asked Mercy to keep an eye on the news while Clark was with him, to let him know if anything big was happening that might truly require super intervention.  He excused himself to the bathroom when he got a message about trapped miners in a collapsed tunnel in China, and again when a school bus crashed through the guard railing of the Metro-Narrows Bridge.  Once, when the tracker he’d had planted in Lane’s shoe showed a sudden spike in her heart rate in the middle of Suicide Slum.  When he returned a minute later on each occasion, the penthouse was empty as expected.  

Clark would never have forgiven either of them if lives were lost while he was watching a movie.

Even if Lex wouldn’t have missed Lane in the slightest.

But for the most part, Lex’s phone stayed silent, and Clark’s smile grew wider, the lines of worry around his eyes smoothing out as the superhero caught some much-needed downtime.

***

Of course, when Clark _did_ finally make the connection with Metropolis—and the world—going so quiet, the reaction was predictable.  Lex let him hide for a week, and then ran him to ground at a charity function that Clark and his partner had been assigned to cover.

Lex smiled his most natural and obnoxious smile as he followed Clark around the room, letting him think an excuse had worked for a moment, before changing his mind and going with him; pointing out a face Clark might like to interview and letting him head off, then appearing in his blind spot and smoothly joining the conversation; leaning confidentially close to Clark’s ear, making him sweat and sway with dizziness, and asking innocently if he was feeling all right; letting him have a moment’s peace before popping up at his elbow again, shocking Clark into spilling his drink all over himself and pressing forward to help him blot it off his rented tuxedo with a napkin and a too-close flash of green.

He hadn’t had so much fun since the first time he’d played nemeses with Superman, when he’d watched the realization in Clark’s eyes that for _once_ , he could have a conversation with Lex where he didn’t have to hide what he could do.  Clark wasn’t going to be able to let this go on forever; at some point, something was going to have to give.  

Lex was looking forward to finding out what it was.

“Lex!” protested Clark at last, as Lex found him again by the hors d’oeuvres table, and reached past his arm to point out a particularly delicious delicacy.  “I’m _trying_ to—”

“Lex Luthor?”

He turned, ready to snap at the interruption, and caught sight of the young woman who’d spoken; dark-haired and stunning in a slim slate-grey dress that would have been conservative if it weren’t for the slit.  She lifted her chin as she approached to maintain eye-contact without any apparent fear or awe.

Gold-digger, Lex’s brain categorised automatically.  One who’d done her research and knew what he liked.

From behind his shoulder, Clark escaped again.  No matter; he wouldn’t get far, and his attempt to speak had only been the beginning of a mediocre lie.  Better to give him time to think up a better one before pressing the point.

“Yes?” said Lex, giving the woman a slow smile as he swept her up and down with his eyes.  She was fair game, and more than worth the price of a pair of diamond earrings.  Her close-cropped hair was shorter than his usual tastes, but that was possibly a plus tonight, after spending the evening winding up Clark.  He’d have to confirm her age, first; she looked around twenty, but looks could be deceptive.

“Contessa Erica del Portenza,” she said, extending her hand to shake with a knowing smirk, the name a shock of recognition.

 _Not_ a gold-digger, then.

“Contessa, what an honor!” returned Lex, keeping his face smooth and coloring his tone with mild surprise and pleasure.  “I don’t believe we’ve ever met.”

And _that_ was certainly true.  His research team had been working for months trying to discover more than just the name of the woman who’d single-handedly tripled LexCorp stock prices over the last six months.  They hadn’t been able to confirm her nationality.  Couldn’t find a trace of the title she claimed.  Not even a birth date.  Or the source of the money she’d used to buy up forty-five percent of his company.  Lex preferred to know more about his investors.

The angular features and pale olive complexion fit the way she pronounced her name, the short hair and understated dress more clues he couldn’t trust.  Her posture and bearing fit the old money title, and the kind of family who would continue to claim it generations past the abolition of the Italian monarchy.  She could be anyone, well-tutored.

He took her extended hand crosswise, and raised it to his lips instead of shaking, making her laugh at him with her eyes.  Clearly this one was intelligent enough to recognize it as an insult—and a test.  And confident enough in her position not to be offended.  Dangerous.  He smirked up over her knuckles to acknowledge she’d caught him; deliberately disarming the slight.  She laughed at that, too.

Not well-tutored: well- _studied_.  Whatever else she might or might not be, Lex didn’t believe she was a puppet.  Her reactions were too quick, too on point.

“You’ve been very busy recently,” he offered, and took advantage of the momentary grip on her hand to draw her towards a more private alcove against the wall.  It was furnished with a couple of comfortable looking chairs, and looked suitable for an uninterrupted conversation.  “Should I be thanking you for your efforts, or watching my back?”

“Oh, I have nothing but LexCorp’s best interests at heart!”  She sat and crossed her legs inside her slit skirt with a deliberately provocative slide.  “I’m heavily invested, too.”

“So what is it you think I can do for our largest minority shareholder?” he asked, allowing the insincerity of the offer to show through at her disingenuous reply.  

If this woman had chosen _him_ as a target, and LexCorp as her battleground, ahead of all the struggling companies and inexperienced directors in the world, then she had badly miscalculated.

“Oh, nothing, I’m sure!” she returned airly.  “There’s so little influence one can truly expect to have in such a position.  I assume I won’t be able to convince you to sell me a small parcel of your own stock?”

“I’m afraid not,” agreed Lex.  What she thought she could do with the stock she’d been patiently—and expensively—acquiring, Lex couldn’t imagine.  Lex personally maintained fifty-two percent of LexCorp shares, and had no intention of letting his ownership percentage dip below that.  But as the owner of a substantial minority, she was entitled to representation on the board.  If nothing else, that gave her the leverage to make herself a pain.  “Wine?” he asked.

“Please.”

He flagged a waiter, the ritual of ordering covering the exchange of measuring looks.

When they were alone again, he spoke first, having decided to be more direct.  Lex had no wish to enter into another grudge match now that his father was _finally_ gone and he was unencumbered by the man’s pointless scheming.  If he could persuade her to be clear, perhaps he could discover why she had focussed her attention on him, and convince her to move on to easier prey.  

“I must admit some surprise,” he said, “at the single-mindedness focus on acquiring LexCorp.  Obviously I feel that the Luthorcorp merger provides a valuable boost to LexCorp’s resource base, but I can’t quite see what drew your attention to my little kingdom.”

She looked at him frankly for a moment, then shook her head.

“Oh, _mio caro_.  I’m almost sorry to have to do it to you, because I can see I’m going to like you.  But after all those years fighting Lionel?  You should have known better.”

Lex’s blood suddenly froze, and he had to concentrate hard for a moment on maintaining the smooth motion of his glass to his mouth, mind calculating and discarding possibilities at light speed.  “You knew my father?”

“Some,” she demurred, lowering her eyes in calculated modesty.  “Enough that he gave me… this.”

She drew a folded sheet from her bag and held it out to Lex between two fingers.  The paper was thick, expensive, and distinctively Lionel.  Lex knew what it said before he even touched it.

“I expect you’ll want to have it tested,” she said, tipping her head as he accepted the codicil to his father’s will.

“Obviously,” said Lex, scanning the document.

There was no need for tests, except to buy time.  Lex knew his father’s signature very well.  And his style.  He should have known that Lionel would never let a little thing like being dead stop him from interfering in his son’s life.  One last hurrah from the old bastard, too much of an interfering busybody to lie quietly in his grave.

The Contessa raised her wineglass towards him in a toast, the bowl cradled in her palm, large eyes dancing her satisfaction.  “Let me know your preferred expert; I’m sure you’ll understand it won’t be leaving my sight.”   

“You deliberately waited until I’d rolled the companies together,” said Lex flatly, re-evaluating her intelligence, and her age, upwards again.  She had to be a youthful thirty, at least.  And cunning enough to convince his father that she would make Lex a worthy opponent.  That kind of confidence took not just brains, but experience.

“Of course,” she shrugged.  “Luthorcorp shares were useless by themselves after you were finished with Lionel; even he had to admit that.  But what was the share ratio for the merger again?  Eighty-twenty?  My thirty-three percent of Luthorcorp should work out to be roughly…”

“What do you _want_?” asked Lex, unwilling to give her the satisfaction of quoting the figures they both knew perfectly well.

Assuming the estate was reopened, assuming she managed to get this codicil executed, assuming Lex couldn’t successfully argue that the Luthorcorp shares had been fundamentally transformed since the dispersion of his father’s estate and required alternative compensation… assuming, as was a reasonable assumption, that his father had anticipated the obvious, and a fair proportion of the subtle…  The Contessa’s near forty-five percent parcel of conventionally acquired LexCorp stock was about to become precisely fifty-one point four percent.  Majority ownership.

“Things I can't have.”  She smiled at him mockingly, then drained her wine and stood, tugging the codicil from his unresisting fingers.  “I’m willing to let you stay on as CEO.  I’m doing this as a favor to Lionel, for old times sake.  And for fun.  I’ll take an office on the same floor as yours; full access to the files.  Public relations can call my role whatever you like.”

She tucked the paper back into her bag and stood, smirking, returning the insincerity he’d offered her earlier in spades.  “I’m sure you’ll barely know I’m there.”

Lex stood too, making internal plans to arrange an attempt to have her pickpocketed before the end of the night’s gathering.  She would be expecting it, but it was worth a try while the document was vulnerable.  And he would have to start having Brian’s office and the computer networks cleaned of any records of the dicier research projects.  It would be weeks, hopefully months, before she could force this through, even if he capitulated early to avoid the scandal.  It probably wouldn’t do any good; cleaning for a deliberately authorized intruder was always difficult.

“I’m sure I won’t,” he murmured.  “My lady.”

“Oh, Erica!  Please!” she deflected brightly.  “It’s been almost seventy years since that title’s meant anything—and I intend for us to become close friends.  Lex.”

She curtsied ironically, and swept away.

Near to shaking with an impotent rage he couldn’t afford to let show—a rage he hadn’t felt since before putting his father in the ground—Lex went to take out his frustration on harassing Clark with the ring.

Lex had never been able to _bear_ feeling helpless.

***

Harassing Clark had been one thing.  Actually _seducing_ him on the way home had _not_ been in the plan.

It was a stupid, impulsive move.  Lex made too many of those, if you asked his father, which Lex had never done but with whose opinion on the subject he had nonetheless been regularly acquainted.

Perhaps he should have chosen someone other than his straight best friend, with whom he happened to be in love.  After all, he’d been very carefully _not_ sleeping with Clark for years.

But then, if he’d chosen someone else, it wouldn’t have been the equivalent of throwing his favorite crystal whiskey glasses at the wall.

Lionel was an expert at drawing out Lex’s self-destructive impulses.

***

Lex was fully aware that Clark had never truly had a chance to let himself go, his powers a terrifying burden of responsibility even beyond the purpose he put them to.  

Clark had always been scared of losing control, of injuring someone.  After a visit to the emergency room with one girl at MetU, and a visit to the police station with another—which had required some fast talking from Lex’s lawyers and a settlement with a gag order for the girl in question—Clark had clearly assumed the worst.  He appeared to have given up on the whole idea of romance, and hid himself away inside a ridiculous, clumsy caricature of himself at the least hint of interest from any woman.

Clark would have known the solution all along, if he’d thought for a moment about the common thread to the marginally more successful romances he’d had in Smallville.  Despite the fact that the Kryptonite-induced psychoses of the girls he’d kissed—and Lex was definitely including Lana in that diagnosis—had made them unsuitable partners for the long term, he’d never actually _hurt_ any of them.

They’d been protected, at least enough for self-conscious adolescent kisses, by the legacy of Krypton.

***

Clark blushed as Lane gave him a pitying kiss goodnight, the involuntary reaction more real than his usual stumbling sham.

Lex pushed on the weak point, emboldened by the swoop of jealousy low in his stomach, the pounding chant of _how dare she_ still echoing in his head.  He wasn’t even sure which _she_ he meant.

He’d always known it would be easy; he had a predator’s instinctual recognition of prey, the instinctual knowledge of how to drive and herd, and where to bring the quarry down.

And it _was_ easy to keep Clark off-balance, body running just ahead of brain, better judgement short circuited by desire.  Clark had always been a grudging slave to his body, his frightening alien powers taking charge unpredictably as he learned to control his heritage, forcing him into a constant fight to curb his own differences and fit in.  It took him time to adjust to something new.  Time that Lex had no intention of allowing him.

It was easy for Lex to take Clark’s compliance for granted and direct the car home.  It was easy to press him against the elevator wall as they rose, hands invading the ill-fitting tuxedo to extract trembling gasps, kisses stealing away any opportunity for words.  It was easy to keep Clark from thinking, keep him from gathering his wits enough to object.  

And Clark was even more beautiful than Lex had always imagined in his bed, laid bare like a virgin sacrifice, disarmed and desperate, his fevered skin as salty and yielding as any human’s.

Lex was half-certain he was dreaming as he lowered his body onto Clark’s, the thrill of the touch that had only ever existed in his fantasies buzzing through every nerve as he pressed them together from chest to toe.  

“Lex,” said Clark, abruptly frightened, his eyes open and pleading.  He clutched Lex’s shoulders weakly, robbed of the power that had always kept him separate, overwhelmed and terrified by the force of his own body’s natural response.

“It’s all right, Clark,” lied Lex, because it was already too late to go back.  “You’re safe with me.  You won’t hurt me.”

He laced their fingers together against the mattress, bracing them both against the storm, and set up an insistent friction that made Clark’s eyes roll back in his head.

When Clark’s cry of pained ecstasy came in his completion, Lex captured it with his mouth, hating himself as he followed after.

***

The next morning, awakening to a furiously blushing alien in his bed, Lex could have brushed it off as the wine.  Could have laughed it off as an experiment between friends.  Could have explained that now they’d tested the theory on Lex, who healed fast if something had gone wrong, he’d have some jewellery made for Clark to keep handy, so that he could make his own choices about who to be with.

He didn’t.

Their friendship was probably already irreparable, as soon as he allowed Clark a moment to reconsider what had happened.  Besides, Clark hadn’t pulled a disappearing act.  As far as Clark was concerned, that was virtually consent.

Lex had never claimed to be a good person.

***

Of course he rationalized it.

There was always the possibility that Clark would never be able to safely have sex with a soft, fragile human outside the presence of Kryptonite—but perhaps little bit of practice and a lot of care would give him the control he needed.  Really, it only made sense to run extensive experiments with Lex, to avoid the risk of hurting and exposing Clark’s secret to an unknown woman.

But Lex had also noticed an intriguing subtlety in Clark’s behaviour, which suggested an alternate path.  A path which meant that perhaps he _didn’t_ have a moral obligation to make Clark aware of his other options just yet.  Quite the reverse.

Lex had mostly kept his ringed hand to himself in the bedroom.  Needling his friend with a minor pain he couldn’t admit to at a cocktail party had been one thing, but Lex wasn’t actually a sadist.  The ring was a necessary safety precaution, not a sex toy.

But Clark, obviously having lost track of a lot of things, had begun to react to a caress from Lex’s naked left hand with the same weakened moan as to a touch from his right.  Lex’s mind never switched off; he couldn’t help noticing the psychological duplication of the physical effect of the tiny chip of Kryptonite.

Perhaps Clark could learn to switch off his more ubiquitous powers at will, without having to rely on props.  Clark _needed_ that, and for more reasons than the chance for physical intimacy.  Clark’s inability to ignore the constant pleas of the world was how the whole thing had started, after all.

It was Lex’s duty as a scientist—and as Clark’s friend—to find out.  And _that_ meant he was practically obligated to continue keeping Clark in the dark, too distracted and off balance to think things through.

If it just so happened that it also meant he finally got to indulge himself in the pliant, eager body and undivided companionship of the boy he’d loved for years; to distract himself from the frustration of his hopeless battle to avoid losing LexCorp; to put off the final moment when the reawakened adoration in Clark’s eyes turned to betrayal…

Well, every endeavor had its perks.

***

Lex had a duplicate ring made, set with green glass, and found the attempt to wean Clark off the Kryptonite was almost immediately successful.

He responded flawlessly to the placebo, while Lex tucked the true Kryptonite ring underneath the mattress, then in the closet at the far end of the room, then in a lead box in his office five floors below, and finally in his vault a hundred miles away.  Within a week, it was clear that Clark was perfectly capable of completely dismissing his superpowers, even in the midst of intimate abandon, as long as he believed them gone.

Still, Lex thought that letting Clark get a little more practice before he told him couldn’t hurt.

***

The report was in; the codicil was genuine.  His lawyers had advised that fighting the reopening of his father’s estate would have a very small chance of success.  His public relations manager had advised that the battle was likely to have a substantial negative impact on LexCorp’s bottom line.  There was nothing for Lex to do but grit his teeth, issue the Contessa her share of Lionel’s estate in LexCorp shares, and open the doors to his new majority shareholder.

But there had to be a way to regain control of his company, and to make her sorry she’d ever _heard_ the name Luthor.  He just needed to find it.

***

Lex had decided to wait for Clark to notice on his own that his powers were working around Lex again.  Clark was clearly benefiting from a regular, scheduled break from being bombarded by the minor emergencies of the world—and telling someone they were taking a placebo, after all, risked negating the effect.  If Clark came to the realization by himself, he would hopefully understand his own control enough to duplicate it consciously, without requiring him to stay any closer to Lex than he wished after it all came out.

And Lex could recognise sophistry even in himself; Lex was still sleeping with Clark because he _wanted_ to.  It was a dream come true to finally have, if not the trust Clark was incapable of giving him, then at least the illusion of his desire.

It was a good illusion, too.  Clark was willing and curious, resigned to the fact that Lex and his ring weren’t going to leave him alone, relieved to be forced to abdicate, for a time, the burden of responsibility that no human could have borne for so long, eager to explore the opportunities his hiatus opened up.  And he looked up at Lex once more with the eyes of the dazzled teenager, whose cool older best friend’s money and worldly wisdom were so far beyond his own that they were practically infinite, maintaining his lies only because his parents had forbidden him the truth, rather than because he truly believed Lex might harm him.

Lex had spent many lonely nights at the castle thinking about how easy it would be to take at least one of the things he wanted from those eyes, how Clark’s habitual indecision would make it straightforward to keep him swept up in the moment, not just for one night, but for weeks or months before it all caught up with him.  On some issues, Clark could be so easy to manipulate that the only conversational options Lex had were the choices of which direction to send him.

It wasn’t a temptation any Luthor could have been expected to resist.  But something about those eyes had made Lex want to _be_ the man that Clark saw when he looked at him.  Even after Clark had stopped seeing that man.

But Clark was technically an adult now, even if the difficulties of his unique physiology had forced him to remain untouched.   _Of course_ it was taking advantage.  But Lex was fixing a problem for Clark.  It was hardly the first problem of Clark’s he’d dealt with uninvited, simply because he’d realized that he could.  Nor was it the first time he’d crossed boundaries to do it, and taken satisfaction in the execution of the task.

If Clark had said ‘no’, Lex would have desisted.  Obviously.  As if Clark ever said a flat out ‘no’ to anyone about anything that didn’t involve his secret, and even then only if pressed.  As if Lex wasn’t familiar enough with the way Clark’s mind worked to leave him any other way out.  But the longer it went on, the worse it would be when Clark finally saw through it; when he realized Lex had been distracting and directing him all along.

Clark was obviously relieved to be able to touch someone, anyone, even if it was only Lex.  If it weren’t for the lies—and the obvious beginnings of a shy, Clarkian courtship with Lane during their work hours, Lex could almost have believed that Clark kept coming back every night for some reason other than his own desperate loneliness, the desire for contact with the only person he believed he could safely let go with, who could help him put down the heavy burden of Superman.  Maybe even Clark believed there was more to it than that.

But Lex had always known it couldn’t last.  Their destiny couldn’t be this, not anymore.  Perhaps it never could have been, because the destiny Lex imagined Clark had seen, too, had never truly included Lex.

As soon as he realised he could, Clark would move on.  He was meant to be with someone more suitable.  Someone who didn’t manipulate him as reflexively as breathing.  Someone he could trust with his secret, and his heart.  Someone who deserved him.  Someone who wasn't Lex.

***

The Contessa was clearly not going to let LexCorp go cheaply.

She watched Lex’s every move, tore through the files she’d been given and dug deep behind them to ones she hadn’t, far too often a step ahead of Lex in discovering the openings before he could shut them down.  She charmed Lex’s employees, ingratiated herself with the board, and seemed to be genuinely enjoying the fact that Lex was the only one who could see how deliberately disruptive she was being.  Lex couldn’t tell whether she was quite as good as him—or perhaps even better—but she didn’t need to be to maintain her lead.  If Lex was going to have any chance, he needed a distraction.

He needed to escalate.

She raised her eyebrows when he asked her, at the intimate dinner he’d set up to discuss her vision for LexCorp’s future.

“Lex, I’d be delighted!”  She looked more pleased than Lex had anticipated at the suggestion.  He’d thought he was going to have to work much harder to get her to even consider the idea.  “But I thought you were happy with your… friend?”

Forcibly, Lex relaxed the tense muscles in his forearms, as the Contessa gave him a tolerant look.  Lex wasn’t surprised; Lionel would have been appalled at the lapse.  And that he’d missed the fact that she knew about Clark.

“We’re two of a kind, Lex,” she told him indulgently, and was Lex ever going to stop underestimating her?  “We could have a lot of fun together.  But I won’t allow you to embarrass me if you’d rather keep playing with your Hephaestion.”

Lex thought of Clark, ordering flowers for his partner.  The surveillance report of their little date at the chocolate cafe.  The way he’d given Clark the opening to tell him about it—and his secret—time and again, only to be rebuffed.  The lies upon lies upon lies.  The way Clark would be storing up every move Lex made to lay the retrospective blame, this time not for his superhero alter-ego, but for himself.  The inevitability of the end.

He’d thought he would have more _time_ , thought that by the time he’d won her over, the situation with Clark would already have gone down in flames.

But this battle wasn’t worth fighting.  Not if he wanted any chance of salvaging Clark’s friendship from the wreckage.  Or reclaiming LexCorp.  The only way through was to commit to the role.  The time for games was over; he would have to force matters with Clark.  It was inexcusable to have delayed the truth for so long already.

Lex brushed aside the selfish, pointlessly naive wishes, and smiled at the Contessa—at _Erica_.

“I’m choosing you,” he said.

“Oh, I see!”  She gave him the faint, penetrating smile which meant she thought she saw something that Lex didn’t.  Then she chewed her lip for a moment, calculatedly artless.  “Why not?” she said. “All right then, Lex, _yes_.  I think I will marry you.  I trust you’ll have things settled before the invitations go out?”

"Of course,” said Lex, and refilled her champagne.  “Then... to Mr. and Mrs. Lex Luthor.”

She laughed, delighted at the play.  “To Contessa Erica Alexandra del Portenza…” she corrected, “and her _husband_.”

They touched glasses together, and drank.

***

It was more difficult than he’d expected.

***

Not convincing Clark that his mortality was within his own mind; in the end, that had been as easy as Lex had always known it would be.  As easy as forcing Clark to recognize his ability in order to save a life.  As easy as jumping out of a helicopter while Clark thought himself powerless to help.  If there was one thing Clark couldn’t do, it was allow someone he could save to be hurt.

“Take off the ring!” yelled Clark.

“No,” said Lex.

“Take it off!” cried Clark, pulling at him in panic as he tried and failed to fly.

Clark had always needed things spelled out.

Would it hurt Clark, Lex wondered, if he let them hit the ground together while Clark believed his powers were out?  Surely not.   

Lex had subtly tested whether Clark's invulnerability had gone the way of his other powers, of course, on a number of occasions.  That morning, he’d given him a hickey in front of the bathroom mirror, where Clark would be able to see and remember when he looked back.  From the corner of his eye, while Lex had brushed his teeth afterwards, he'd watched Clark raise wondering fingers to his throat, touch the discoloured spot with the hesitance of one whose skin had never maintained a roadmap of his mistakes.  The mark was gone now; had been gone from the moment Lex walked more than a few steps away from him.  

Next time Clark needed to prove he wasn’t Superman, it would be handy for him to know that he could turn it off temporarily.  But psychology only went so far; the body's autonomic functions would kick in in a survival situation.  Clark was in no danger of dying from a misplaced belief in his own vulnerability.

Hitting the ground from this height probably wouldn’t hurt Lex either, at least not for so long that he’d notice.  Meteor enhanced healing only went so far.

But the guilt would cripple Clark, even if the fall couldn’t touch him, and he still wouldn’t understand _why_.  He still wouldn’t have the only gift Lex had left to give him, the only explanation Clark might understand for what Lex had taken from him in a fit of rage and yearning and despair that had lasted months, because even if it wasn’t the reason it could be the excuse.

“It’s just green glass,” said Lex, heart breaking as he opened the cage door.  “I haven’t worn Kryptonite in months.”

Clark remembered how to fly.  And didn’t remember to be afraid of himself.

Now Clark was free of ties. He was free to choose whomever he wanted.  

Lex had always known there was no chance that Clark would choose _him_.

***

“You’re not in love with me,” Lex told him, afterwards, in his office, when Clark still didn’t seem to get it.  “I’m just the only one you’ve ever been able to let go with.  I’ve fixed your little problem.  I won’t tell you I didn’t enjoy it.  But it’s over.  Go chase after the woman you really love.”  

Lex had spent months sweeping Clark along the path of least resistance, carefully guiding and escalating and shepherding his reactions, never allowing the slightest risk he might balk.  But without placing the hurdle in Clark’s way, without taking the chance he’d refuse to jump, there was no way Lex could know for certain if Clark had _ever_ been doing more than just going along.

He left it open, hoping Clark would deny it.  That Clark really hadn’t been wishing for someone else as he shared his body with Lex, that he genuinely didn’t know who Lex meant...

“But Lois isn’t…” said Clark, brow furrowed, then broke off, looking stricken as he recognized the implicit betrayal for what it was.  

“Lois _is_ ,” Lex spat at him, made vicious by the unwanted confirmation.  “You know it, I know it, and if I won’t be second-best to Superman, you can be sure I won’t be to your partner.”

He glared into Clark’s eyes, the hurt and fury barely caged there by sheer force of will—and long, bitter practice.  

He could still see the strings he could pull to make Clark stay; still see them more clearly than ever.  The desire to reach out was almost overwhelming, to touch him, and keep touching, in all the places and all the ways he’d learned over the past few months, that would make Clark forget for just a few more minutes.  The comfortable lies that would put off the inevitable yet again.  The bitter taste of truth that would be admitting his own unrequited feelings, of becoming another weight on Clark's already overburdened shoulders, another cry for help the hero couldn't ignore.

No matter what he did, it couldn’t last.  He’d always known they would break when they finished their fall; it was the truth of their destiny.  And Lex loved Clark too much to make this any worse for him than he already had.

“Go away, Clark,” he said, turning away before he could lose his resolve.  “I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

Once Clark was gone, Lex tore the counterfeit ring from his finger and hurled it blindly, hearing the fragile glass crack as it struck the ground.  He covered his face with a hand that felt empty without it.  

He hadn’t realised how much he’d still been hoping Clark might prove him wrong.

***

The cracked glass ring was an easy fix; Lex had another one made and locked the broken one away in his desk.  It was by no means the first time he'd had needed to replace something he’d broken in the midst of a temper tantrum.

His friendship with Clark… couldn't be replaced. Nor, it seemed, easily repaired.

After finding out that Lex was getting married again, Clark stopped talking to him.  Lex could barely get him to agree to being his best man.

He had to resort to getting his attention in costume just to make sure he was still alive.  Well.  Not that Clark was alive, that was obvious from the news constantly showing footage of the caped alien patrolling the city, day and night.  His byline in the _Daily Planet_.  The surveillance footage of Clark and Lane.  Together.

So yes, Lex already knew that Clark was alive.  What he needed was to make sure that he remembered Lex.  That he understood, and didn’t blame him.  At least not enough to stop saving him.  At least not enough to stop saving his _life_.

Perhaps Lex was making sure that _Lex_ was still alive.

***

And then, after the wedding, Clark told Lane.

Actually _told_ her his secret, the secret he’d guarded for years against Lex, as his friend and as his enemy and even as his lover.  

When Lex realized, after returning their honeymoon on the yacht remarkably alive, that Lane had clearly been deemed worthy of the whole truth—that there’d been no extenuating circumstances, no emergency or unfortunate slip-up that had pushed Clark to reveal himself against his will; that Clark had simply chosen, _chosen_ to _trust her_ … well, after that, Lex spent an entire evening and most of the night drinking, plotting untraceable ways to kill her, and smashing everything remotely breakable in his office.  

Eventually, Erica turned up and with one carefully placed eyebrow invited him to man up, clean up, and come home to fuck it off.

As it turned out, they skipped the first three stages. Afterwards Erica laughed as she picked broken glass out of her hands and knees.

“Never mind, Lex,” she told him, and kissed his scalp where he sat amid the remainder of the shards, too drunk and drained of emotion to move anymore.  The festering abscess of hope had been lanced now; the pain was hollow.  “I’ve left you a present in the accounting files.  By tomorrow morning, you’ll find you’re far too busy for moping.”

She took him home and tucked him in.

Lex pretended not to notice anything out of the ordinary when she called over the Afghan hound who’d moved in along with her and petted him, letting him lick her hands before she climbed into bed to curl close against Lex’s back.  The following morning, her cuts from the glass and the shadowy fingermarks Lex had left on her hips had vanished, along with the silver from Nikolas’s muzzle.  Lex pretended not to notice that, too.  

He’d already realized that Erica was far older than he’d guessed.

She didn’t comment on the way Lex’s wounds had healed, either.  She just made sure he was too busy putting out fires to worry about much at all.

By the time Clark and Lane announced their engagement three months later, Lex had resigned himself enough that he barely flinched.


	2. Faulting

It was only natural that things would change between them.  They’d both got married.  Even if it had been to each other, it would have made things different.

Of course, Lex had been through the process before and, considering her initial ultimatum, Erica seemed oddly ungrudging of his feelings for Clark.  Lex was fairly sure that, as by far the smartest of his wives, she simply recognized the hopeless cause for what it was.  And trusted—if not in Lex’s promise of fidelity—then in her own ability to recognize and head off any genuine chance of its being compromised.  She mostly seemed amused at the effect Lex’s distraction made on his fruitless attempts to take back LexCorp.

That was all right, too.  Lex had learned there was value in being underestimated.

But now that Clark had moved on and found love—apparently forgiven Lex enough to ask him to be best man in return—Lex had hoped he might be able to begin picking up the pieces of their friendship again.

Clark, however, seemed to have disappeared from view.     

The long held Friday night get-togethers had petered out.  Phone calls always went through to voicemail.  Messages that Lane—for she’d kept her maiden name—promised to pass on never received responses.  He wasn't attending functions he shouldn’t have been able to avoid.  Lex watched for Clark at LexCorp press conferences, but Lane had taken his place there.  Either he’d been reassigned a different section, or she was deliberately keeping him away.

After six weeks watching the pack of reporters without a sign, Lex had all but given up on that angle when he finally saw Clark in the crush, and let him have the first question.  Even better luck was discovering that rather than slipping out early as usual, he’d dozed off in his chair and been left behind by the rest of the reporters.

It took half an hour, sitting on the hard plastic chair beside him, before Clark’s nodding head sank low enough onto his chest to startle himself awake.

Lex looked up from his laptop, on which he’d been tabling Superman’s appearances worldwide and coming to a disturbing conclusion.  It seemed that it wasn’t Lane who’d been keeping Clark away from him after all, or at least not directly.

“Clark,” he said.  “Did you have a nice nap?”

“Lex!” said Clark, after a brief moment of confusion, surprised and seemingly genuinely pleased to see him despite the pinched, pale look to his face.  “It’s been a while.”

“You’re a hard man to catch these days,” said Lex, only mildly accusing.  “Cancelled plans, ignored phone calls.  Nobody seems to see Clark Kent much anymore.”

“I’ve been busy,” said Clark guiltily, and glanced at the glass ring Lex still wore.  “Late night last night.”

“Looks like it’s a late night every night.  And an early morning, too.  Mostly both at once.  Clark, you don’t look well.  You need to get  _some_ slee—”

Clark’s eyes went distant, his attention already gone from the conversation.  “I need to go,” he said, pushing himself up out of the chair with his hands.  His eyes shifted downwards; thinking about lying, but lacking the emotional energy.

“ _Do_ you need to go?” Lex pressed.  “Clark, why?”

“I think Lois left the stove on,” he called over his shoulder, already loosening the knot on his tie as he left at a half-run.

***

When Lex looked it up, it turned out that at _that_ particular moment, a truck holding bales of wire had overturned on the freeway, backing up traffic for miles, and the police had called for Superman’s help to clear it up.

Like most of the things Lex had been able to confirm Superman had done over the course of his very busy day, it didn’t make the news.  

What did, was that Superman had put out three fires, tracked down the arsonist while he was setting a fourth, attended a bomb threat which turned out to be a false alarm, and caught a falling piano that had broken loose while being lifted into an apartment building.  And he’d assisted with a drugs bust where, unbeknownst to police, Lois Lane had turned out to be tied up in the basement of the derelict house, having crept inside alone in search of the exclusive.  She and Superman were observed behind the roving reporter, exchanging what appeared to be heated words, before he was called away to another emergency.

***

There was an asteroid hurtling towards earth.

LexCorp submitted a proposal for its deflection using a mathematically precise missile strike to redirect it a crucial few fractions of a degree to one side.  It was safe, predicted to have a 97% chance of success, and relied entirely on the efforts of humans.  It wasn’t even considered.

Lane’s face glowed with besotted pride, at the front of the crowd of reporters, as Superman rocketed up into space to meet it head on.

***

Superman destroyed the asteroid.  Obviously.  That wasn’t the point.

The point was that the Metropolis police force were calling on Superman to help with every arrest.  World leaders were asking Superman to assist at every conference.  International humanitarian agencies used him to distribute aid packages.  Every new hospital renovation or charity ball was opened by Superman.

The point was that the world used to be able to survive without Superman’s supervision, but now he was there to take care of the heavy lifting, humanity seemed to be forgetting what it was like to take responsibility for itself.

The point was that Superman was looking pale and drawn, that the last teenage carjacker he’d detained had been only fifteen, and that he hadn’t had the time to stay and have a stern heart to heart about unrealized potential and the world of possibilities unlocked by staying in school.

The point was that to no one had seen Clark Kent for almost two weeks.  Not even, from what Lex could determine and despite her constant protestations that anyone questioning his whereabouts had 'just missed him', his wife.  At least not dressed in his own clothes.

Lane wrote up the article interviewing Superman about the asteroid, as well as two articles she credited to Clark about criminals who'd thought to take advantage of his televised absence from Metropolis, only to be apprehended on his prompt return.

She quoted Superman as saying that he was here to help, that his superpowers were his gift to Planet Earth, and encouraged the citizens to call on him when they needed.

***

Lex could see why Lionel had liked Erica.  Could see what he’d seen, that had made him decide that she was the one to sic on Lex in his stead.

In a way, she reminded him of his father, if his father hadn’t been such a malicious bastard.  Perhaps of the man his father could have been, if he’d cared more for playing the game than for humiliating Lex.  Perhaps what it might have been like if he’d ever been given a genuine chance to win his father’s approval.  Lionel must have found her impossibly confusing, and assumed Lex would do the same.

She was sly, but refreshingly open about her agenda.  Beautiful, and blisteringly intelligent.  She didn’t demand respect, she simply took it, or took advantage of the fools who didn’t give it to her.  She liked Lex.  And desired him.  Genuinely and openly, without shame or derision.  And while she always went for the throat, she never went in for the kill.  For her, it was all a game, played and enjoyed for other people’s meaningless tokens and the thrill.

It was refreshing, being with someone who never resorted to emotional blackmail, never took losing personally.  Or winning.  Someone who never condemned Lex’s success or failure in their games, her sparkling laugh of enjoyment seemingly just as genuine either way.  They manipulated each other constantly, on every level, and regularly it was Lex who found himself outmaneuvered.  Often it ended up in the bedroom.  More usually, they just had sex wherever they were.

They more than had the fun she’d promised.  And it was, by a very long way, the most functional relationship Lex had ever been a party to in his life.

After a while, Lex found he quite liked her, too.

And she clarified things.  If nothing else, living in such a constant battle forced Lex to do a lot of thinking about his own pressure points.  About the things he’d been reaching for all his life.  Things Lionel had always ridiculed as he dangled just out of reach.  The things that Lex wanted in a life partner.  And the things that he didn’t.

***

Metropolis had a mugging.  Superman had been halfway around the world dealing with a peace conference at the time, but he visited the survivor in hospital to express his best wishes, and his regrets at the loss of her parents.

The _Daily Planet_ ’s picture on page two showed Superman signing the girl’s cast with a look of what perhaps only people who knew the truth about Clark Kent would have recognized as super-guilt, the strongest and most dangerous of all his powers.

Lane’s article gushed over the superhero’s kindness and dedication to the city, and his duty to the world.

Lex visited his underground Kryptonite vault, and pulled out a small, leaded velvet box.  He hadn’t worn the real thing since he’d weaned Clark onto the placebo.  But from the look on Clark’s face in that picture, the glass ring he’d worn in memoriam since their separation wasn’t likely to even register.

***

The reactor had been relatively easy to break into.  Lex grinned in maniacal satisfaction as the flutter of blue and red landed between him and the control panel.

“Superman!” he said, throwing his hands grandiosely wide, because the chance to overact had always been one of the best parts of the nemesis gig.  “You’ve been busy lately.  But you can’t be everywhere.  You can’t do everything!”

“Luthor!” bellowed Clark, for a moment looking like he was having fun again.  Lex braced himself for a concussion.  Then Clark’s head snapped to the side, listening to something unseen.  “I—”

“Don’t you _dare_!”  Lex took three quick strides forward, into range, stabbing Clark in the chest with a ringed finger, feeling the alien warmth radiating from under the crest.  “If I have to take you down, Superman, I _will_.  Haven’t you ever heard of burnout?  You’re on the verge of collapse, you _idiot_.  When was the last time you went home?  Or slept?  Or,” he lowered his voice; this was going past pushing the boundaries of their roles and into outright admission, “wore your gla—”

”I don’t _need_ any of those things,” said Clark.  He just looked tired, now, the creases under his eyes highlighted by the flashing red lights warning of an incipient nuclear meltdown.  “The world does need me.  Look, I’m sorry, Lex, but I really have to go.”

He turned and strode out past the boundary of the ring’s effects, then sped away.

Lex frowned after him for a long minute, then wandered over to enter the deactivation code, leaving the countdown timer frozen with four seconds to go.

As he’d suspected, Kryptonite wasn’t going to be enough, anymore, to solve the problem inside Clark’s head.  Lex could have used more—could have incapacitated him—but the effect would only last as long as he was able to keep him prisoner, which wasn’t a long-term solution.

He was going to have to go about this the _other_ way.

***

The news that evening showed Superman speaking softly to a badly burned child in his arms on the way to hospital, destroying a falling satellite, lifting the replacement back into space, extracting the snarling Lane from an undercover encounter with a ring of car thieves, appearing at a hospital fundraiser and, at police request, searching the river for and retrieving the remains of a murdered young woman who’d been missing for months.

“He’s going to have a complete meltdown,” said Erica, sharp eyes picking up the same tells as Lex in the superhero’s posture, as he gently laid the tarpaulin wrapped bundle on the river bank.  “Any day now.  Or fly back to Krypton, and leave them to it.”

“No,” said Lex, certain of that more than anything.  “Superman won’t melt down.  Or leave.  Not unless someone makes him.”

“Why do you—oh.  Nemesis business,” said Erica, dismissively.  She lay back against the arm of the couch and swung her stockinged feet into Lex’s lap.

“I do know him rather well, by now.”  Lex ran his fingers over her arches, squeezed the fine bones.  Boredom was as good an explanation as any to give her for his interest in Superman.  It was certainly one she could relate to, and didn’t approach any dangerous topics.  “I know his pressure points.  He’s far more likely to fall apart because he _can’t_ help.”

Erica looked amused as the news turned to a bill being tabled in Congress, placing limits on the ability of government organisations to accept help from super-powered individuals.  It was backed by a number of senators known for their association with LexCorp.

“Really, Lex,” she said, prodding at his thigh with her toes.  “I’m surprised you think you can afford to provoke a fight on another front at the moment.  Have I been boring you?”

Lex smirked at her.  “Never, my dear.  But a man is measured by his enemies.”  He put her feet out of his lap and crawled up the couch to hover over her.  “With the quality of _my_ enemies,” he said, and kissed her slowly, before pulling back to hold her gaze, “I intend to rule the world.”

He lifted her with a palm under her waist, and she arched up into him, mollified.  

Lex proceeded to do his best to distract her from whole topic of the meaning of his relationship with Superman.

***

In the night, a tsunami hit the coast of Indonesia without warning.  Superman was at the epicentre of the quake that had triggered it within minutes, diving below the surface of the water to disrupt and quell the remaining circle of waves before they could reach India and Thailand.

The morning news showed him in Indonesia, moving like a dark blur through the devastation, bright primary colors barely visible under the mud, clearing debris, assembling temporary shelters, handing out aid parcels, and laying out endless rows of bodies.  He was doing the work of twenty men, using superspeed and strength—but still, the work of men.  It was long past the time when any application of his abilities could achieve the impossible.

The _Daily Planet_ carried a Lane and Kent article on the front page praising Superman’s continuing efforts, and condemning the new bill.  Lane’s style was apparent, missing the compassion and balance her partner provided to her writing, and the quotes from Superman were obviously manufactured by the wrong author.

The next day, one of Lex’s pet senators held a conference showing a compelling graph of public donations, the pledges of aid by foreign powers, and the size of the Australian military force assisting with the clean up.  Each was correlated with aid sent to the scene of the last similarly devastating tsunami, ten years prior, showing dramatic drops across the board.  

Far from being appreciative of Superman’s selfless offers of assistance, Senator Friskin claimed, apparently governments and private citizens of the global community were using the alien’s tireless volunteer work as an excuse to shirk their moral responsibilities to their own kin.  The average wait time of those impacted to receive access to clean water and basic necessities had actually _increased_ , despite the progression of technology, thanks to the international community’s over-reliance on Superman.

The _Daily Planet_ ’s coverage of the story, including a call for public donations to aid the stricken communities, was written up by Cat Grant and Perry White.  

***

Superman stayed in Indonesia until the immediate crisis was over.  But by the time he left, the framework of international aid workers around him had noticeably increased.

Back in Metropolis, he opened the Police Charity Ball, froze a leaking petrol tanker solid at the scene of a highway accident, took a stolen car to the impound lot complete with the thief in the driver’s seat, fulfilled a young cancer victim’s dying wish to see the earth from space, defused a prison riot, prevented the assassination of the visiting Chinese Minister of Commerce, and collected and destroyed a huge batch of unauthorised Superman dolls, whose dodgy manufacturing process had left them laced with a chemical that was inducing seizures in young children.

He still didn’t appear to be sleeping.  At all.

***

Mercy didn’t make a sound as she let herself into Lex’s office.

Lex frowned at her—she knew better than to interrupt like this—but followed her with his eyes, keeping the majority of his attention on the phone call and his head of research’s wheedling prattle about Erica’s cuts to his budget.  Frankly, Lex was inclined to let the matter stand.  He had bigger battles to fight; every time he’d ever offered the man a dollar he’d overrun it by a hundred.

Mercy turned on the television in the sunken informal meeting area, flipped the channel, and stood awaiting further instructions as the images played out on the wall behind her.

On the screen, Superman’s skin seemed almost green against the red of Lois Lane’s blood.

His face was expressionless, his pace measured as he carried her motionless form out from an aging tenement building, through a ring of emergency vehicles.  By the time he found an empty stretcher and transferred her onto it, the dark red stain pillowing her head had rendered the sigil on his chest all but unrecognizable.

Superman had been back from Indonesia for barely three days, and had apparently been moving at superspeed the entire time.  He wasn’t now.

For the first time, watching the alien standing among men, Lex couldn’t discern even the faintest hint of Clark Kent beneath the steely mask.

“Something’s come up, Brian,” Lex managed, remembering the phone call and cutting off the other man mid-sentence.  “I’ll call you later.”  He rang off without waiting for a response and dropped the phone onto the white leather sofa, bracing his hands on the seat back, watching the worst moment of his best friend’s life play out live for the cameras.  

The paramedics converged on the stretcher, willing to try despite the way their expressions told the obvious story, but Superman waved them away with a small shake of his head.

He stared at Lane’s body for a long moment, his brow wrinkling faintly, his eyes going distant as though looking through her matted, sodden hair to examine the fractured skull plates beneath.  Then he whirled, striding back towards the crime scene, where the press clustered behind the tape, his ridiculous cape swirling around the tops of his boots.

The TV cameraman took an unconscious half-step backwards.

“Mercy,” said Lex, “send me through anything urgent, then clear my schedule.  And set up a call direct to Clark Kent’s voicemail.”

The police commissioner intercepted Superman at the kerb, shaking his hand effusively, his lips moving in frantic, inaudible speech.  He darted unveiled nervous glances from the small, still form on the stretcher, to the cowering car thieves who were only now beginning to realise the depth of their stupidity.  It was all under control now, the commissioner assured him.  The criminals were in police custody.  No need for… further help today.

Superman’s mask still didn’t crack.  He nodded and swept his stern gaze over the silent ranks of the press.  Then he raised one fist above his head, the movement oddly jerky and unnatural as he looked upwards past it, took off and swiftly disappeared.  His other hand stayed clenched white-knuckled against his thigh, half-hidden by the fluttering cape.

“For how long should I clear your schedule, sir?” asked Mercy.

Lex had a meeting with the board the following day.  Erica would be launching her counter-attack on his attempt to retake control.  Mercy didn’t remind him; there was no chance he’d forgotten about it.  He couldn’t afford to miss it.

The television turned to talking heads discussing the development, the Superman footage beginning a replay in a corner of the screen.  Lex flipped it off.

“Cancel everything through until Monday,” he said.

***

Lex had thought hard about his approach, but eventually decided to be polite, to start.  There were many ways it could play out, with many consequences.  He couldn't expect to win this from Erica in a game, and things could become messy very quickly if he was forced into impoliteness. 

He knocked on her office door before leaning in.

“May I have some blood?”

“Why not use your own?” she asked without turning, obviously untroubled by the non sequitur.

“Side effects.”  Lex touched his head.  “Kryptonite grants wishes, but there’s always a price.  I was lucky mine was so little.”

She looked up from her computer to give him her full attention.  For once, her eyes carried all of her years.

“Oh Lex, you’re so young,” she said.  “I think you haven’t yet understood your price.”  She paused, considering.  “Yes.  I’ll let you have the blood.”

“Thank you.”  Lex inclined his head at her and turned to leave.

“And Lex?” she said.  When he looked back at her, he found her eyebrows raised in warning.  “It wouldn’t have gone well for you, if you’d approached me the _other_ way.”

***

It was very late that evening when the memory of a shy, awkward teenager Lex remembered all too well made his hesitant way into Lex’s office.

He’d had been marking time with busy work reading a proposal from one of the junior science researchers—she had a promising career ahead of her, he thought, as long as she didn’t let Brian keep taking the credit for her work.

“I, I, uh, I got your message,” said Clark, “but I didn’t…  I mean, it sounded important?  I can’t stay long, because—”

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” said Lex sincerely, standing to greet him.

“I—uh—thanks,” said Clark, made even more awkward by the pleasantry.  

His head jerked to one side, then the other, as though being bothered by invisible gnats, looking through the wall in one direction and then turning to catch something from the other way.  It had just turned eleven o’clock.  The news recaps would be playing on televisions across Metropolis, right at this moment: fourteen channels in five languages reminding him of Lane’s death and analyzing his response.  Perhaps he was hearing even further afield; breakfast TV in Moscow and Cairo, morning talk shows in Mumbai and Karachi, the evening news in Auckland and Honolulu, the private speculations of seven billion people across the globe.  Everyone knew about Superman’s connection with Lane, even if no one was certain what it meant.

“She was, she was—it was the way she would have wanted to, to—”

Lex stood, walking around the desk to stand right in front of Clark.  He watched the blood drain from his skin, watched the little tremors start up in his body, watched the relief settle over his face as, for him, the world outside the room fell silent.

“It’s all right, Clark.”  Lex’s ring flashed as he reached out and around to grip the back of Clark’s neck firmly.  “You don’t need to keep being strong.”

Clark wavered for a moment and then his knees gave out.  He wrapped his arms around Lex’s waist and rested his cheek against Lex’s stomach, breathing harsh and loud through his open mouth as the sobs wracked his body.  Lex pushed his fingers through Clark’s hair, feeling him shake with the closeness of the Kryptonite ring, and the exhaustion, and the grief.

They stayed like that for a long time.

***

Lex woke with a crick in his neck.  Really, his designer should have chosen his furniture for comfort as well as aesthetics.

Clark was groggily extracting himself from where he’d lain on the couch, his head pillowed in Lex’s lap.  He subsided as Lex carded a hand through his hair again, his muscles going limp again.

“I should…” he wavered.  “Mom.  Lois’s family.  They all expect… there’s decisions.  And, and _Superman_.  Superman needs to—”

“They can wait, Clark,” soothed Lex, shifting his hand to the centre of Clark’s chest and pressing, holding him down.  He could feel the ridges of the S through Clark’s cotton shirtfront.  “She was _your_ wife.  Your mom will cover for you.  And no one will blame Superman if he goes missing today.”

It was going to be a quiet day for the police in any case.  The criminals of the world would be united in their terror of being the one Superman was looking at, if the Man of Steel snapped.

Clark picked up Lex’s hand and held it against his cheek, biting his lip against the pain even as he leaned into it.

“Lois would have,” he said.  “She would have said the world needs...”

“Lois—” said Lex sharply, and then carefully moderated his tone, “didn’t always think about what _you_ need.  The world is always going to take however much you let it have.  And she wasn’t—”  Lex cut himself off again, not at his best while navigating the precarious slopes of potential offence that was criticizing his friend’s dead wife.  

“—wasn’t happy being safe,” agreed Clark.  “She expected Superman to be able to save her, at the very last moment, while she…  Superman _should_ have protected her!”

“He can’t do everything,” said Lex patiently.  “You can’t blame Superman for—”

“Lex, I _am_ Superman,” snapped Clark.

Lex’s breath hitched in his throat, frozen at the unexpected admission.  Somehow, however open a secret it was between them, however awkward it became to talk around it, he hadn’t imagined that Clark might _ever_ actually _tell_ him.

“ _I_ should have—”  Clark’s voice broke.  He turned his face into Lex’s palm, pressing his lips to the metal band of the Kryptonite ring.  “ _I_ should have been able to protect her.”

“You can’t blame yourself,” Lex repeated.  “There was nothing more you could have done.  She wasn’t fair to you, expecting to have it both ways.  She expected too much of you.  Both of you.  I’m sorry.”

“I know,” said Clark, his breath tickling the junction of Lex’s palm and fingers.  He closed his eyes, head falling back, emotionally drained.  “I know.”

He lay quietly for a few minutes, before he shifted, something obviously on his mind.

“Lex.  What did _you_ expect of me?” he asked.

Lex frowned, momentarily wrongfooted by the change of subject.

“Nothing,” he said, truthfully.

“That’s what I thought,” said Clark, and sat up.  He was rumpled and unshaven, pale and clammy from the proximity of the Kryptonite, eyes red with tears he still hadn’t been able to shed.  He still looked better, after one uncomfortable night’s uninterrupted sleep, than he had for months.

“I should go,” he said, and this time he meant it.

“Would you like me to come with you?” asked Lex.  “Or send someone to take care of the arrangements for you?”

“No,” said Clark, resigned but steady.  “Thanks, but I think it’s time for me to face the music.  I remember how it went with Dad—it’s going to be a long day, but it’s… I need to do this.  Can I come back later?”

“Clark.”

Lex looked at him without expression, and waited.

“Yeah, okay,” said Clark, embarrassed.  He ran his hand up the back of his head, ruffling his hair.  “Thanks, Lex.  I’ll come back later.”

He left.

Lex looked after him for a moment, and then checked his watch.  He still had an hour to spare before the board meeting.  If it went well, he might still be CEO of LexCorp that evening, when Clark came back.  When Clark _finally_ came _back_.


	3. Folding

Lex found himself in the enviable position of fortune having smiled upon him.

Clark _had_ come back.  Come back to having Friday night dinners.  Back to ringing Lex’s private line to interrupt meetings with disorganised babble, and dropping around to the penthouse for a game of pool just because he could.  Back, somewhat guiltily, to beginning to smile again.

Lex didn’t even have to worry about Clark finding out that he’d killed Lane, because he hadn’t actually _done_ it.  He hadn’t even _decided_ to do it.  Of course it had been among the options under consideration, given the way she’d egged Clark on in his superheroic efforts, but her own stupid insistence on running into danger without a partner to watch her back had taken the decision out of his hands.  In hindsight, it wouldn’t have been a decision he could have lived with, despite the obvious benefits.

Oddly enough, Clark and Erica got on incredibly well.  He’d made a good first impression by taking an instant reciprocal liking to her dog.  He and Nikolas had been rolling around together shedding hair on the rug like a pair of overgrown puppies when Erica walked through the door, that first night, startling a sparkling laugh out of her at the sight.

Lex had never been glad of the slobbering pest’s presence in his penthouse before that very moment.  But thus bonded, Erica and Clark made room for one another in Lex’s life like they’d been made to fit, neither showing the slightest hint of jealousy or apprehension.

For Erica’s part, Lex knew, she was allowing their battlefield to widen to include what she knew was Lex’s greatest weakness, deliberately giving him enough rope to hang himself.  

It would have been easy, in a moment when he was alone with Clark, to reach for him and pull him in too close.  Easy, knowing how sweetly Clark would have given in to a flash of green and a confident voice.  Easy, given how obviously Clark was right _there_ for the taking.  But Lex didn’t take advantage of the still-grieving widower.

Actually, he found, he genuinely didn’t want to.

The fact that Erica saw _that_ in him, won him more than just the immediate battle.

***

Once the seal on Clark’s grief had been broken, Lex locked the Kryptonite ring away in his vault again, out of reach.  

He still wore the glass ring, not for Clark, but for himself.  As a reminder of what he’d once had, under false pretenses, and lost.  What he’d risked losing, by pushing Clark for something that would never have been freely offered.  A reminder that what he had now was _better_ than that hollow impersonation of his dreams ever had been.

Clark didn’t need the ring to remind him, anymore, that sometimes he needed to just be Clark.  He’d learned his lesson the hard way, and Superman’s involvement worldwide plummeted.

Articles came out in the gossip magazines, theorizing anew on Superman’s connection with Lane, theorizing that his sympathy and aid for the human race as a whole had been centered on her all along.  Theorizing that, since her death, he was gradually withdrawing from Earth entirely.

After six weeks of speculation, Clark Kent wrote up an exclusive interview with Superman, titled _Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman_.  In it, Superman claimed that recent events had forced him to reconsider the consequences of allowing humans to become overly reliant on super aid, and that he had decided it would be wise to primarily restrict his involvement in human affairs to true emergencies.  The majority of his humanitarian and social justice endeavors would pass to the newly established Superman Foundation, supported by passionate human staff, donations from the public, and sparing personal appearances and guidance by the superhero himself.  Superman would always be there, he said, to help humanity.  But his most important role was to serve as an inspiration and support to the human heroes who had always called his adopted planet home.

With Superman’s implicit endorsement, Lex’s _Rationality In Augmented Individual Collaboration_ act passed in both houses.

The Superman Foundation was swamped with donations and volunteers, only some of whom had been solely looking for an opportunity to get up close and personal with Superman.  

Lex helped Clark sort through them all, helped him set up the legal separation that stopped the Foundation from being sued by members of the public dissatisfied with Superman’s handling of some event, helped him trademark Superman’s image and take control of the unauthorized merchandise market, helped him get over his embarrassment and set up a workshop that provided well paid jobs in developing countries, creating quality authorized products for the Foundation’s fundraising.

Superman was never observed refusing a call for help.  At least, he wasn’t by anyone but Lex, who could recognize the subtle signs of Clark’s head turning to consider a call, the minute shake that classified it as something within human capabilities to handle, the tension easing from his shoulders as he deliberately switched himself off from hearing what he had never been strong enough to ignore before.  But the aid he provided when caught by a spurious request for assistance was perfunctory, and he quickly excused himself without apology.  Genuine requests for non-urgent aid or personal appearances were processed and prioritized by the Foundation and, after Lex’s private discussions with several key members of the staff, they became fiercely protective of Superman’s time.

Superman still pitched in to lend a hand with reconstructive works after a disaster, when he saw a need, working for limited shifts alongside human volunteers to shore up relief efforts.  And he had time again, now, to stop for chats with messed up teens and battered spouses, leaving them with the contact details of Foundation counselors when he had to move on.  He scheduled appearances at schools talking about the responsibilities that everyone had to help out—to help each other, and to help themselves—and about the superhero each one carried deep inside.  His eyes glowed with pride in his work again, rather than just looking worn down by endless, thankless tasks that had swamped him before.

The cries for help died down to the ones who were serious, rather than the ones who thought they could get away with it.

And the throttled-back requests for assistance from the police and government organisations that _did_ come in, while they were usually urgent, were a lot more respectful.  And grateful.

***

In the end, it had taken Lex over a year to arrange, after he’d married Erica.  Two, since the night they’d met.  They had both been careful to write wills ensuring that the untimely death of one party would be most disadvantageous to the other.  Killing the Contessa had never been viable way out of her grasp, even if Lex had been certain he could succeed.

But the shares she’d used to take control of his business were far from her only asset, and Lex had always known that attacking through the others would eventually bear fruit.  The only problem had been keeping her distracted with the battle for LexCorp—and the battle on the home front—while he waited for her to let down her guard.

Lex linked their arms together, and they strolled to the end of the wharf as he quietly explained what he had done.

“Would you like to sign the shares over to me before the freeze on your account comes through?” he asked, handing her an iPad showing an advance copy of the arrest warrant.  “Or would you rather sit in prison while I go through the process of having your takeover nullified?”

“Lex,” she said, her tone mildly reproving, her eyes flicking down the list of charges.  There were a lot.

In fact, her dealings with Internal Revenue had always been completely above-board and scrupulously legal, because she wasn’t _stupid_.  But they both knew that the facts of the matter were hardly relevant.

Her lips tucked in with self-deprecating approval as she skimmed the transfer contract he’d drawn up, and signed.

Lex refused the stylus when she attempted to hand it back.

“And this one,” he said.  He swiped the screen in front of her without looking, bringing up the next document: an Uncontested Petition for the Dissolution of Marriage.

“Lex!”

She actually did seem a little more shocked—possibly genuinely dismayed—about that.  Perhaps she’d thought he could forgive her for taking LexCorp from him, for drawing out Lionel’s game from beyond the grave.  For forcing Lex’s hand with Clark.  Perhaps she’d thought they would take a turn with Lex on top, while she fought to bring the power back into her grasp.  Back and forth in perpetuity, as long as they both shall live.  Perhaps it would have been a compelling idea, in other circumstances.

The tokens she’d played for had never meant anything to her.  Perhaps Lex had stumbled upon one that did.

Back at the road, police cars were starting to pull up; men in suits were beginning to run towards the elegant couple at the end of the wharf.

Erica laughed, dismissing the moment, and signed.

Lex released her elbow, and handed her a cruise ticket to the Caymans.  They’d reached the bottom of the gangplank.  Casting-off was only waiting for her; all her belongings were already stowed aboard, Nikolas presumably already chewing on them, rather than Lex’s shoes.  If she hurried, the ship would be outside jurisdiction before Internal Revenue’s call to the coast guard could have it turned back.

“Enjoy island life, Erica,” Lex told her, finding himself sincere.

“I’m sure I’ll find something to pass the time,” she agreed.  She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him deeply.  “Thanks for the fun, Lex.  Do look me up, after you get bored?”

She let him go, and walked away up the gangplank.

As he strode back down the length of the wharf, passing the frantic tax men running the other way, Lex didn’t bother to look back to check if she had made it in time.

Erica had never needed anyone’s condescension.

***

Lex told Clark some of what had happened that evening, while they played pool.  Afterwards Clark hovered conspicuously close, lingering in accidental brushes and covert glances.

“No, Clark,” Lex finally said plainly, surprising even himself.

“No, what?  I…  Oh.”  Clark looked crestfallen, and stepped back.  Perhaps he’d thought he was being subtle.  “I thought, the Contessa?  Lois?  And now they aren’t…”

He didn’t seem to be able to find words to describe what Erica and Lane weren’t.

“Do you really think,” said Lex at last, giving him a look, “that if that had been the problem, it would have stopped me?”

At Clark’s look of incomprehension, Lex put down the pool cue and stepped into his personal space.  He reached up, dragged the fingers of one hand down the faint evening stubble of Clark’s jaw towards the point of his chin, watched his eyes flutter shut.  The imitation ring reflected the dim lights as he drew their mouths close.

Clark’s breath came in short pants of anticipation.

“Would it have stopped _you_?” Lex whispered, directly over Clark’s lips.

He let it stretch for a calculated moment.  Then he turned away, leaving Clark breathless and wanting.  If Clark hadn’t been able to fly, he probably would have fallen on his face with how far he’d been leaning in.

Lex picked up the pool cue again, focusing on lining up his shot.  The frustrated confusion on Clark’s face was vivid enough in his mind’s eye that he didn’t need to see it to be looking right at it.

Clark said nothing further, and Lex sank the black.

***

Clark kept an amiable distance, after that, reverting easily to a friendship marked by far less than the usual tensions, if not entirely without secrets.

There were a lot of opportunities for them, now they’d both returned to the bachelor’s lifestyle, and now that Clark’s secret no longer shadowed every conversation between them with bitter double meanings.  Clark’s two jobs had receded to taking only marginally more than the usual workaholic’s slice of his time, without Lane dragging him off on ridiculous investigations, and without Superman pulling him away whenever somebody stubbed their toe.  And Lex’s social calendar was abruptly open, now that he was free of Erica’s constant, harrying assaults on his business, and her presence in his home.

Without discussion, they found themselves spending more time in each other’s company than they ever had: eating every meal together, relaxing in the penthouse together, and wordlessly dividing the newspapers in the mornings—Clark having arrived one evening with a duffel bag and taken up residence in Lex’s guest room without explanation.  Lex found he didn’t even mind Clark regularly excusing himself to take care of urgent super business, now that it wasn’t tainted by the lies.

In the context, Lex was rather proud of himself for acknowledging, and then not giving into, the urge to delay the revelation that could ruin it all, for any longer than necessary.

***

As soon as her condition stabilised, and the aftereffects became clear, Lex had her brought to LexCorp Towers, and took Clark for a walk down to the basement.

Clark did not react well.

“Lex, what—”  His eyes were round, horrified.  “What have you _done_?”

Lex slid his hands into his pockets to brace himself against the urge to duck his chin.  Erica had never berated him for the reflex, not like Lionel, but the corners of her eyes had always softened enough to convey that she’d thought the tell was sweet, which was possibly worse.  Clark didn’t even appear to notice his brief struggle to maintain eye contact through uncertainty.

“It’s really her, Clark,” he said.  “I know you’ve smashed up a few Luthorcorp cloning labs that were on the edge, but this isn’t like that.  There was no Kryptonite involved, this was… something else.  Something that’s been around for a long time.  Her memory’s fuzzy in places, the blow to the head shook up a lot of the more recently laid memories.  I didn’t want to tell you in case… well, the point is, it turned out her brain was fine.  I’ve talked to her.  She’s the real thing.  I promise.”

Clark glanced down at Lex’s hand unconsciously, but Lex hadn’t worn the ring today.  It hadn’t seemed appropriate.  He’d put it in his pocket, though, in case Lex had needed a reminder.  Clark was supposed to be happy about this.  Relieved.

Lex gave up on holding eye contact, and looked through the one way glass of the laboratory observation room at the bare-basics living room beyond; a table and chairs, a fold out couch, and a limited access television.  Sometimes it was necessary to bring test subjects to LexCorp Tower for observation or questioning.  The cell had at various times housed Kryptonite mutants, experimental clones, and inconveniently ambitious department heads.  Now, it held the recently resurrected Lois Lane, scowling as she paged through back issues of the _Planet_ and scrawled in a dog-eared notebook.

“She’s, she’s just going to… it’ll be the same again!” protested Clark.  “She’ll want me to… and I won’t be able to say…  she’ll think I can…  Lex!  You know it wasn’t exactly a _surprise_ when she died, not the way she was going!  We’re just going to have to bury her _again_!  If what we buried the first time even _was_ her!”

Ah, so that was the problem.  Of course he was worried about her getting hurt again.

“You can work it out,” said Lex reassuringly.  “Set some ground rules on heading into dangerous situations.  I’m sure your editor will have some for her, too.  You’ll be able to make her understand.  I’ve explained to her that this was a one-time deal.”  

And that had been a heated conversation, because Lex had had no intention of answering any of her questions about how he’d brought her back, and Lois had been made vicious by the frustration of her memory loss, ready to lay blame on any convenient scapegoat.  Lex had made sure that she was fully cognizant of where the blame for her predicament lay, as well as the devastation her recklessness had wrought on the people who loved her.   Lex couldn't deny he’d enjoyed rubbing it in—he was going to need to watch his back around Lane from now on—but he couldn’t trust that job to Clark.  Lane was a danger to herself, and to Clark, if she didn’t learn to employ some basic self-preservation.

“But she, she remembers, remembers… us?  Remembers about me?”  Clark made a vague incomprehensible gesture.

“Sorry,” said Lex, not entirely certain which of a number of things Clark could have been signalling that he meant, but fairly confident of the answer nonetheless.  “From what we could work out, she’s lost all of the last year, and the couple before that are a bit patchy.  We helped her fill in the blanks from the public record.  She remembers that you were her partner, found out that she was married to you.  She tore through the Daily Planet archives for all your joint stories, but I thought it was really up to you to fill her in on… personal details.  You can speak freely, I’ve made sure the cameras are disabled and the research staff from the floor are elsewhere today.”  

Lex took a deep breath.  He’d already gone behind Clark’s back too far, and for too long.  He had reasons.  Excuses.  He hadn’t wanted to face this moment again.  But without this moment, nothing was worthwhile.  It was past time to step back.  

“I’ll leave you to it,” he said.

“Lex,” said Clark, his face flooded with fear the way it never had been in the face of evil plots and Kryptonite.

Unbidden, Lex remembered that wonderful, awful night, what felt like eons ago, when he'd given in to the desires he’d been holding back for so long.  When he had lashed out, in his despair at the impending loss of LexCorp, and tried to ruin the only thing he loved more.  And nearly succeeded.  The fear, and hope, and trust on Clark’s face, the openness that had gone far beyond his nakedness.  When Clark had clutched him in genuine terror as he was overwhelmed, had said Lex’s name as though he was a savior.  

In that instant, it was all there on Clark’s face again: an intense, sensual memory of skin and soul.

Lex could feel how easy it would be to reach out to Clark, and _take_ him.  Again.  Even without putting on the ring.  He could feel the way Clark’s body would mold against him, iron-hard muscles weak with indecision that could become, in Lex’s hands, the decision itself.  Feel the way he could walk Clark backwards until he hit the glass, bite the spot behind his ear that made him moan, hands delving inside clothes to well-remembered sensitive points, mouth following behind to seek and devour.  The disbelieving gasp Clark would make when Lex went to his knees, which had never got old.  

Lex could suck him right there against the mirrored glass in sight of Lane, the sound of Clark outside her room an unmistakable rhythm.  Leave him looking flushed and disheveled, clothes crumpled, buttons torn and too guilty to bear facing his wife.  Take him back up to the penthouse and do it again; this time fuck him properly, slowly, the way it made Clark writhe and beg—utterly defenseless, for all his powers, against Lex’s manipulations.  The woman he loved, left for tomorrow.  Or never, depending on how thoroughly Lex decided to destroy their relationship.  

Lex could have that part of Clark again, for as long as he could make it last.  Months, if he played it carefully.  The path was so clear, each step so obvious, Clark’s every response even more so.

Lex pressed his fingers subtly against the outline of the glass ring in his pocket.  He wasn’t going do that to Clark again.  He wasn’t going to do that to _himself_.  If there was one thing that marrying Erica had taught him, it was an appreciation for what it could be like to be with someone he hadn’t had to _make_ want him.  Someone who wasn’t with him because they wanted something he could give them, or because he’d made himself their only choice.

Knowing his partner was merely dancing to his invisible strings was never going to be enough, anymore; had never truly been enough in the first place.  Lex needed more than that, had been searching for it without understanding all his life.  And even if Lionel had tried to make him believe otherwise, Lex _deserved_ more than that.  

Clark deserved more than that, too.  Even if it was with someone else.

For a moment, Lex wondered if Clark would refuse; balk at the hurdle he’d placed, and reach back to Lex.  

The moment held.  Clark opened his mouth, closed it again, his indecision almost painful to watch without _nudging_ …

“All right,” whispered Clark, glancing involuntarily at Lex’s bare hand again, at the pocket where he’d left the ring, nowhere safe from X-ray eyes, and then finally at his face.  “I’ll do it.  Stay here?”

Lex bit the inside of his lower lip, the motion all but invisible.  Clark was making him sloppy; after displaying this many nervous tics in the one conversation, Lionel would have all but disowned him.

He nodded, a sideways tilt of concession.  “If you want me to,” he said.  

Then, blank-faced, he watched Clark slip through the doorway to face his wife.

“I want a divorce!” Lois yelled at him, instantly on her feet at the sight of Clark.  “I don’t know how you talked me into marrying you, but I’m sure you must have used trickery!  I want a divorce, and I want it now!”

“Okay,” said Clark, without lifting his eyes from his shuffling feet.  

Lex winced internally.  This was going to be a train wreck if Clark was _still_ incapable of recognizing his cue to deny something.

“Okay?   _Okay_?” demanded Lane, too experienced a journalist to let an unexpected change of direction break her rhythm.  “What is it, _Smallville_ , suddenly I’m not good enough for you?”

“That’s not it, Lois,” denied Clark without rancor, at least catching that one.  “Look… you don’t remember much about… _us_?  But you're right.  We weren’t… good, for each other.  I tried, to be what you wanted, and you tried, to be, what you thought I, I _needed_ , but, but I’m not, I’m not…”

Lane was clearly seconds away from brushing his performance aside and going into full Mad Dog Lane interrogation mode.  Perhaps it would even have been enough to derail the half-hearted attempt to put her off, and get Clark to give her the truth.  But before she could speak, Clark’s inadequate eye contact abruptly locked on.  

She froze as he finally looked at her properly, intense through the glasses.

“I’m not Superman,” said Clark plainly.  “You _always_ wanted me to be him.  And I’m not.”

“ _Obviously_ you’re not,” sneered Lane, stung.

“Besides,” Clark pressed on without flinching or breaking eye contact with her, “I’m actually pretty sure I’m gay.”

Which would essentially close the book for Lane, Lex considered, but didn’t necessarily mean anything for _them_.  Clark could never just say no.  Never risk hurting someone.  Never think beyond the pain of the person in front of him.  Of course he would try to find a way to put Lois off that made it no one’s fault.  

Lex was an expert in rationalization.  Hope could be a brutal thing, and it had burned Lex too many times to let it take hold again.

“You _bastard_!” hissed Lois.  “You utter _bastard_!  I’ve barely been gone for three months!”

“I’m sorry,” shrugged Clark.  He _did_ look sorry but, in the light of his burning bridges, not regretful.  “If it helps, I never cheated on you.  Not even after.  I did love you.  Do.  And I’m glad you’re not dead.  Anymore.  But some things aren’t that easy to resurrect.  We should never have got together in the first place.”

“What _happened_?” she demanded, baffled and hurt and trying to rein it in.  “I don’t understand.  It’s like I’ve woken up in someone else’s life.  Superman’s fallen off the map, and I’m married to _you_!  You’re a decent writer, Clark, but you’re not my type.  You’re a coward, and a flake, and apparently also _gay_.”  Her bitter tone made it clear that she was going to make Clark regret telling her that.  “What did we even _see_ in each other?”

Clark smiled sadly, holding her eyes.  “We were lonely,” he said.  “For people we couldn’t have.  I’m sorry, you didn’t deserve to be my second choice either.”

“You’ve changed, Clark,” said Lois, bewilderment tinged with suspicion.  “You’re not who I remember.”

Clark ducked his chin again, adjusting his glasses, his lips twisting as he folded in on himself.  “Gosh, I don’t think so, Lois,” he said.  “Same old Clark Kent, that’s who I’ve always been.”

There was an awkward silence for a few moments, then Clark tilted his head at her.

“Go on, ask.  I know you’re dying to.”

“What’s _happened_ to _Superman_?” Lane burst out, obviously understanding what he meant.  “ _You_ talked to him!  Did he really stop helping out when I was dead?  Why?  You didn’t push him hard enough in that interview!  What’s _wrong_ with him?”

Clark’s smile was gentle, and his eyes stayed fixed on her, even from the calculated shy angle.  “I think he’s learned the difference between being wanted, and being _needed_.  He’s still around,” he said.  “You can ask him yourself.  I hope you get well soon, Lois.   _The Planet_ needs Lois Lane.  And I’m looking forward to getting my partner back.”

***

Clark still had the shy cant to his chin when he poked his head back into the observation room at Lex.  “Just wait,” he said.  “I need to get something.  I’ll be back in a minute.  Sooner.  Just… don’t go anywhere, okay?”

Lex frowned around at the small, uncomfortable observation room, at Lois visible on the far side of the glass, scowling at her notebook with a ferocious, unseeing intensity.  

“My office?” he asked, with a pointed glance.

“Oh, uh,” said Clark, looking even more flustered.  “Yeah.  Okay.  Meet you there.”

He walked to the corner and out of sight with the oddly stiff-legged gait he used when he was trying to remind himself not to use super-speed.  The stairwell door was still swinging closed when Lex rounded the corner to the elevator, but Clark was gone.

***

Clark was already waiting for him in his office when Lex got there.  He stood in front of Lex’s desk like a naughty schoolboy called in to see the principal, shuffling his feet and hiding his hands behind his back.

Carefully, Lex shut the door behind him.  He crossed to stand next to Clark, leaned his hip on the edge of his desk, and waited.  

The moment felt slow, suffused with a preternatural calm.  And Lex couldn’t feel the thread of how to control it.  There were too many things Clark could say.  Too many ways this could go, now that he’d lost the initiative.   _Given_ it up.  If he pushed now, Clark may well not follow.

Lex pressed his fingers again to the ring in his pocket, the reminder of why he wasn’t going to regret that choice.  Having Clark like that would have been easy, but it would have been nothing but an illusion.  And having the illusion of Clark would never be enough, when he could have the real thing.  Whether or not it turned out that the real thing could only ever be a friend.

“She’s crying,” said Clark, lifting troubled eyes from where he’d been looking at the floor— _through_ the floor, all thirty-seven levels of it.

“Yes,” said Lex, who didn’t need Clark’s powers to know that.

“She’ll be okay,” said Clark, reassuring himself, and visibly switched off his hearing.  “She doesn’t even want me.  Not _me_.  It’s her pride that’s hurt, that _Clark Kent_ wouldn’t want to be married to her.  Lex.”  He stopped, and then pressed on.  “I think you need to tell me.  Did you make her lose her memory?”

Lex blinked once, slowly.  “No,” he said: instinctively, misleadingly truthful.  

Lane had woken up in a LexCorp laboratory a week after her death, confused and disoriented, missing large chunks of memories.  Lex _hadn’t_ had any hand in that.  But he hadn’t been able to help seeing the potential.  He’d set his team to helping her work on recovering her memories… within certain strict limits.

He’d wanted Clark to have a choice.  A _real_ choice.  The chance to choose Lane, yes, but also… also the chance to choose Lex.  He was done pushing Clark away for his own good.  He was meant to be done pushing Clark in any direction at all.

“Not _precisely_ ,” he corrected himself.   “But I may have... made it more difficult for some parts to come back.  They probably still would, if you wanted to—”

“Thank you,” said Clark, holding up a hand to stop the details he didn’t want to hear, and then quickly returning it behind his back with the other one.  “But just so you know, you didn’t need to.  That conversation might have been more awkward if she _knew_ , but it would have gone the same way.  Will go the same way, if she ever remembers.  Lois and I were all wrong together, for a lot of reasons.  And you and I, Lex... we weren't right either, were we?  Even if I didn’t realize.  I’ve worked out what you meant.  Why you said that being married to other people was never the problem.”

Clark looked uncomfortable.  More uncomfortable, his hands still caught awkwardly together behind his back.  He wasn’t deliberately forcing his body language open; Clark didn’t think like that.  Even Superman folded his arms over his chest.  

He was holding something in his hands, his thoughts constantly straying back towards it, all his attention focused on concealing it.  

“I’m not very good at… words,” Clark confessed.

“You’re a professional writer,” said Lex with deep irony, unable to let that one pass.

“Well,” said Clark.  He flushed.  “Not words that matter.  And I thought we didn’t need them, not _us_ , so I never...  I thought you understood.  You've always understood me, what I need.  Like you understand everyone.  You’re a manipulative bastard, don’t think I don’t realise that, Lex.  I know you… _handle_ people.  Even me.  Sometimes I go home wondering what happened in the conversation, wondering what was going on inside your head that you didn’t want me to know.  And you… you handled me, didn’t you?  Into being with you.”

Lex looked at him silently, expressionless.  The right move in the circumstances was an apology, but it couldn’t be anything but another manipulation.  Various combinations of words and sincerity of expression flashed through his mind, leading to Clark storming out, or Clark forgiving him, or Clark taking him back.  Strings to pull, a lover dancing to his tune.

“Yes,” he said finally, and left it at that.

“Lex… do you honestly think that’s all there was to it?” said Clark, exasperated.  “I’ve had offers before—some less subtle than others—and I didn’t only turn them down because of Superman.  There were ways around that problem, other ways, if I’d really wanted to.  You don’t think the fact that it was _you_ might have had anything to do with where we ended up?  You were always the one I needed, even before I noticed you were the one I wanted.  You weren’t a substitute for someone I couldn’t have.  You're…”

He produced the small, leaded velvet box from behind his back, and held it out to Lex, shifting his weight, every inch the awkward Clark Kent without the need to fake it.

Lex took the ring box slowly, keeping his eyes locked with Clark’s as he did.  He held it for a moment before opening it, and as the lid came open to expose the ring inside, watched the way the tension in Clark’s muscles eased, the creases around his eyes vanished, and he settled firmly onto his feet, losing the extra quarter-inch of height he’d gained by nervously shuffling himself into hovering slightly above the ground.

“You’re the real thing,” explained Clark.

Lex looked him over carefully, automatically analyzing sincerity.

Then he looked down into the box, confirming what he already knew.  The ring shone green in the light of the desk lamp, the setting flawed by a line across the middle of the stone.

It was glass.  Just like the one in Lex’s pocket.

Right now, the real one was locked safely away in a vault Lex was moderately sure that even Superman would have had trouble accessing.  But Clark still couldn’t always tell the faint effects of the tiny chip of Kryptonite from the imagined ones he believed into being.  Lex had never shown him how to tell the rings apart.  For obvious reasons.

It wasn’t the real thing.

It was the glass one he’d worn in the helicopter, when he’d shown Clark the truth.  It had cracked, right down the centre, when Lex flung it at the wall in the aftermath of their argument.  Lex had had a replacement made, but rescued this one days later from underneath the couch and kept it in his office ever since, to bring out when he was feeling particularly morbid.  When the unbroken glass ring wasn’t enough to remind him.

Lex let his eyes flicker to the drawer of his desk, closed as neatly as usual, and caught Clark’s confirming blush in his peripheral vision.  Clearly he’d seen the second ring there on X-ray at some point, or at least its leaded box, and assumed that was where Lex kept the real…

But it was only glass.

Clark couldn’t always tell when Lex was manipulating him, either.  Sometimes even Lex couldn’t tell until after Clark’s feet were already treading the path he’d set out for him.  Lex had spent too long twisting the people around him and living up to his father’s legacy to ever be able to stop.  He wasn’t capable of being real to anyone; he didn’t know how.  

And however hard he’d tried not to, Lex had done it again.  Stacked the deck in his favor, taunted Clark while he was vulnerable, wiped Lane clean of the knowledge of his secret, sent Clark in unprepared to face a choice between letting her forget him or risking her death for a second time.  Manipulations he’d set in motion years ago, coming to fruition.  It seemed impossible to imagine that Clark had set out to walk the path on his own, that he truly had seen the same destiny as Lex all along.

The ring wasn’t the real thing.  And Lex _couldn’t_ be the real thing.

But maybe he could be real enough for Clark.

He’d made sure Clark had a choice.  It hadn’t been a fair choice, not really, but he’d given him the options, and he'd stepped back and let him make up his own mind.  And whatever the true reason, Clark had chosen him: not reluctantly or passively, but with certainty and his eyes apparently wide open.  He’d told Lane he didn’t want her to her face, convincingly enough that even approaching her as Superman might not be able to undo the damage.  He’d misled her about his identity with remarkable finesse.  He’d puzzled out Lex’s clue, pressed the point with Lex even though the path of least resistance would have been to let it go.  Again.  And he’d done his very best to make a dramatic gesture to prove himself.  Lex might have put Clark’s feet on the path, but Clark was walking it on his own.

Clark believed in his own motives, and Lex’s, even if Lex found it hard to do the same.  Lex mightn’t know how to be real, but perhaps that didn’t matter to Clark.  Clark wanted him.  Clark believed he was the real thing.  And Clark’s belief was enough to cripple Superman.  Sometimes what glittered truly _was_ gold, if only to the beholder.  And broken glass couldn't hold Clark unless he _wanted_ to be held.  

Lex slipped the fractured ring onto his finger.  When he reached out, Clark melted against him, as though he’d always known he belonged there.

Someone gave a half-choked sob of relief.

It was probably Clark.  Luthors didn’t make such undignified noises.  Lex had always known that.

Just like he’d known that he and Clark had a destiny.  He’d stopped believing years ago, that Clark would ever know it, too.

Maybe that had been the problem, all along.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to my family, for putting up with my mental abstraction. Thanks for the patience of the readers who pushed me on to finish this sequel, I hope it was worth the wait. Thanks to all the Shoobies, whose encouragement and feedback gave me just what I needed to keep going. To CapSlate, who let me bounce things off her despite knowing nothing about Smallville. And thanks again to Megabat, who was with me every step of the way. This is possibly one of the hardest things I've ever written, with the characters fighting me every step of the way. This story would never, ever have been finished if not for all of you.
> 
> Thanks for reading along, folks. I hope you've all enjoyed the ride. 
> 
> If you've got some time, I'd love to hear from you in the comments. :)


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